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Popular UX mistakes present in today’s apps

Building a mobile app is involved with a lot of things such as – designing the UI, adding features, navigation etc that affect the user experience (UX). It needs a lot of time and energy to build a mobile app. But, the sad truth is that most of the mobile apps lose majority of their users immediately after first time use. A poorly developed mobile app doesn’t get a second chance as it is hard to get users download it for the first time itself.

If you want to build a solid mobile app, pay constant and close attention to its usability. All you need to be aware of the fact that a positive user experience can transform your online business. Due to the growing competition in app development industry, it has become a challenging task to design a successful app. Mastering the mobile experience is tough for designers and developers, as the platform has many limitations.

A badly designed mobile app can affect itsperformance and popularity.Here are some of the UX mistakes that are present in today’s apps that should be avoided.

Ignoring target audience

Ignoring the target audience is one of the common mistakes made by app developers.Designing an app by considering target audience plays an important role in making the app successful. You can’t make your plan work, if you are not clear about whom you are catering. It is important to have clarity on end users of the app, so that you can develop the app based on their preferences.

Knowing about the target audience will give you a fair idea of their age group and what all they expect from the app. This will help you create an app with better user experience.Define the target audience long before defining the features of app will help you identify what kind of issues people face and how to resolve such issues? Don’t ignore the target audience as it helps you create a product that has demand in the industry.

Overloading app with plenty of features

Adding as many as features in the app may seem like a good idea. But, it results in clouding the UX – as a result of which users become frustrated with bloated apps. Most of the features in apps are not used by people, and the users may find such apps complicated and not user-friendly. Moreover, apps with plenty of features tend to run slowly. When it comes to include features, stay light and focus more on what exactly users want.

The main objective of your app should be to simplify the life of users while focusing on the things that really matter. Follow the Pareto Principle, which say that more than 80% of users never use more than 20% of the features. If you are concerned about the user experience, it is worthwhile to cut-down the unwanted features of your app.

Forcing Registration

Users get annoyed with complex registration forms or sign-up screens when launching the app. App developers assume that sign up is essential for using mobile app. No doubt, sign-up has lot of advantages, but it is a big pain-point for user. Users may consider it as a major task to fill in the same personal data repeatedly for the app.

Today, most of the apps give the benefit of skipping the registration for time being, so that they can try out the app and judge its value. If the users are not convinced with the registration procedure, they will go to somewhere else.

Make the registration a next natural step so that they will take it eagerly, instead of feeling forced.

Adding lot of front-tutorials

Onboarding is an important part of user experience. A lot of developers use the least useful type of onboarding, which is a swipe through tutorial. Users are overburdened with this type of onboarding, as it acts as a barrier between the users and app. Even if the tutorial is designed beautifully, most of the users don’t have patience to go through it.

Users want to start exploring the app on their own, rather than going through the tutorial. Rather than reading about benefits of the app, they are more interested in trying them. The best way to enhance user experience is avoid front-tutorial or keep it to minimum.

Annoying push notifications

A push notification is something that can make or break the user experience. Users are often bombarded with push notifications that distract them from day-to-day activities. Frequent notifications are something that compels users to uninstall the mobile app. It is extremely important to create useful and relevant notifications to attract users.

Avoid sending too many push notifications in a short span of time, as it may kill the interest of user on your app. Make the push notifications interesting and beneficial for the user. Don’t send push notifications at odd hours such as mid night, disrupting the user.

Copying other mobile apps

Remember that the mobile apps should be designed with a goal and is completely unique from other apps. App developers make the mistake of copying some of the features that make the app look similar to other app. It is better to take customer feedback to make the app desirable to the users. Read reviews and conduct surveys to know the preference of target audience.

Use qualitative data to generate unique ideas of mobile app. You can even accelerate the performance of the app through verified testing.

Not informing about the happenings

It is crucial to inform the users about happenings and latest updates about the app. Similarly, the user should be informed of each and every processing action, such as – form is submitted, processing your request, searching for results and so on. This helps the user to understand what is happening when they take a certain action.

Make sure that the message is not highly technical and is beyond the knowledge of user. If you want to get connected with your users, use a personalized message with a pleasant design.

Conclusion

A good user experience is very essential of the success of any mobile app. The increased interest in UX is definitely a positive sign. Understanding the core practices of UX will help you in your optimization efforts. If you want to avoid the above mistakes, follow some of the best UXpractices that are as below –

Design the mobile app for target audience and not for yourself

Don’t scarify the clarity by making the app ‘feature-rich’

Don’t bombard the users with push notifications

Simplicity is the king and embrace the existing prototypes of the industry

Even if the UX mistakes in your app are small in count, they may take you away from your goal. Improving UX should be an ongoing process and you should always try to bring a new change. Avoid the above UX mistakes to achieve user retention and pave the path to success.

Gayatri is a content writer specializing in web pages and SEO content. She writes SEO articles for companies that want to enhance their visibility on search engine result pages. She contributes articles related to mobile apps, SEO, technology and related niches. She is a techno-savvy person and is passionate in writing how-to-guides, gadget reviews, blogs, eBooks and cutting edge articles about current technology trends. Her work involves rewriting, proofreading, editing and updating content. She experimented with various occupations – programming, training, web designing…..But her favorite job is the one she is doing now.

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Promatics is an ISO 9001:2008 certified offshore web and mobile application development company with a strong team of 100+ highly skilled IT experts delighting SMEs across USA, Europe and APAC. Our services and solutions help clients to achieve tangible business value and remain competitive in today’s evolving marketplaces.